"No, it was the ice."

"Once in a hundred years," he said, "it comes like that."

"Is it better?" she said. "Are you all right?" She started to cry.

"It's gone. You took it. What did you do with it?" He lifted her hand and turned it over. Her palm and fingers were burned blue, and bleeding. "Your hand," he said, "your pianist's hand." He put both of his own hands over hers.

It hurt like fire again. Ruth did not mind it. "Don't leave me," she said.

"At the gates of the abyss," he said, "there you are. Ruth in her black hair." He kept her hand in his left hand, and reached up to her and pulled her slowly down.

She lay over him, her lips on his. He kissed her softly.

"You're a child," he said.

"I'm thirteen."

"Too young," he said. "If you were fifty. TOO young."

"No, I'm not young."

"No, you're not. But this is." He passed his hands, both of them, over her body and her hair.

Ruth began to kiss him. She kissed his mouth until his mouth tensed and changed and took hers. She put her arms around his neck, her live hand and her dead hand. Then she drew back. She lifted off her jumper like a wreath, and reaching behind her, clumsy from the burn of the ice, undid her brassiere.

Her white breasts were full yet high, firm, with budded points.

"Don't seduce me," he said.

"Please," she said.

The tears were on her face like splashed gems. Her eyes were wide and black and crazed with life.

Malach traced her breasts with his hands, then with his lips.

"Old men," he said, "and young girls."

"How old," she said, "how old are you?"

"I remember the pyramids."

Ruth sighed. She clasped his head, the mantle of white hair, holding him to her.

But he held her away. "I lied."

"No," Ruth said. "You told the truth."

He lowered her down, until she was beneath him. Then he stripped both of them, until they were equally naked.

His body was tawny and hers white. The hair at his groin was like the ice which had burned her. She stared at him, at the weapon of his sex. She turned her head not to see.

"No," he said. "Look at me."

He stroked her. She clung to him. The entry of his flesh into hers was harsh and savage.

"You're hurting me."

"Yes."

"I don't mind it. I want to die. I want to die for you."

He kissed her, moving inside her, the pain like a cathedral built up toward heaven, arches and pinnacles, bronze and air.

She turned her neck. "Drink my blood Please. I want you to."

"Hush," he said.

"I love you," she said, "don't leave me. I love you."